


And Also A Small Child

by epersonae



Series: The Director [15]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, implied magcretia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Lucretia did not think they meant a literal child. It wasn’t until Angus McDonald, the World’s Greatest Detective, came walking into the receiving room that she realized that somehow she had accidentally recruited a ten-year-old boy into the Bureau of Balance.There are a lot of McDonalds in Neverwinter, and so there’s no reason why Lucretia would have known this one in particular. Not if he was a teenager or a young man. But a child, 10 years old, well that's a different thing.





	And Also A Small Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Bubblegum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Bubblegum/gifts).



> I got inspired by an idea that Miss_Bubblegum shared and wrote into [That Smile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11424891), combined with [this comment thread](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/112606719). If Angus could be baby Blupjeans, maybe he could also be baby Magcretia? Title is inspired by a Tumblr post about [alternate titles of the arcs](https://tresrowdyboys.tumblr.com/post/162641624049/thesnadger-you-know-those-photoshops-of-harry) based on Lucretia's POV, which kind of felt like a callout to me in particular.

Lucretia did not think they meant a literal child. When they said “boy detective”, she assumed a young adult, maybe a teenager. And the reports she got about his prying into events adjacent to the Relic Wars didn’t dissuade her from that impression. He sounded like a sharp young man, someone who would be a perfect addition to the team. To be honest, she was surprised she hadn’t run across him sooner.

It wasn’t until the bubble landed and Angus McDonald, the World’s Greatest Detective, came walking into the receiving room, escorted by the Regulator Boyland, that she realized that somehow she had accidentally recruited a ten-year-old boy into the Bureau of Balance. 

But Angus just looked at her through his enormous glasses, adjusting them with one hand, and nodded sagely. And then he smiled, a small self-satisfied smile.

“I thought something was up, and now I know! I’d be very proud to work for you, ma’am.”

She smiled too: the Director’s smile, encouraging but very controlled. Meanwhile, her heart started pounding. There are a lot of McDonalds in Neverwinter, and so there’s no reason why Lucretia would have known this one in particular. Not if he was a teenager or a young man. But a child. A child from Neverwinter, 10 years old, with the name McDonald; well, that’s a different thing.

“I’m so glad you’re with us, Angus,” she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could allow herself. “I’m sure the reclaimers wouldn’t say this themselves, but they couldn’t have defeated Jenkins and recovered the Oculus without your help.”

“No shit,” he said, and then covered his mouth with his hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am, sometimes I just can’t help a swear. I’m trying.”

“Sometimes a swear is just the punctuation that you need to get your point across,” she replied. He grinned. “But you’re right. I’ll help you remember not to swear if you help me remember not to swear.”

“I heard there was an initiation?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she said. “When we think we need to see what a recruit is made of. But I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Let’s get you a dorm room. Boyland, can you get him set up?”

“I’m already on it, Director. It’ll be good to have a kid around; I kinda miss mine sometimes.”

She smiled faintly.

“Thank you. You’re both dismissed.”

As soon as the dwarf and the boy had left the room, she slumped down in her chair.

“Davenport.”

“Yes, I know. He’s got Magnus’ face. I see it too.”

“Davenport?”

“No, he doesn’t know. Of course not. How would I even tell him?”

“Davenport!”

Oh gods, not this, not now, trying to have a conversation with Davenport, when he had just enough lucidity to realize some of what was going on around him, but not enough to have an actual conversation with. She put her head in her hands. The world’s greatest detective was not only a literal child, he was her literal child. She thought she might throw up. And Davenport kept talking at her, as if she could have a conversation with him, which of course sometimes she almost could.

“I’m sorry Davenport, can I have the room?”

“Davenport.” He looked immeasurably sad, but he left her alone with her thoughts and memories.

 

She watched the race outside of Goldcliff with the rest of the Bureau, Angus sitting beside her, his little hands clasped eagerly, his whole body leaning in to watch the mad race. He seemed unreasonably delighted, to her anyway. She had been disinterested in that sort of thing, when she was a little girl; books like Angus’ Caleb Cleveland novels were more to her liking. But the boy was just as taken with the shenanigans on the racetrack as he was with the clever plots of his novels.

The look on his face, though; she watched him almost more than she watched the race. That was Magnus’ lopsided grin under her serious eyes. It was even more vertigo-inducing than looking straight down from the moon.

Then everything went horrifyingly wrong: the half-elf with the Gaia Sash was too far taken by the thrall, of course, and the boys: the boys almost died again. Angus’ gasp of astonishment as Taako won the race turned to a cry of horror, and she instinctively covered his eyes.

“This is why we have to recover and destroy the Relics,” she told him.

He carefully removed her hands.

“I understand, ma’am. This is very serious business, and I take it very seriously. I know I’m just a little boy, but I’ve seen...well, you know some of what I’ve seen.”

“Of course Angus.”

And together they watched, with the rest of the Bureau, as the scene of destruction was ultimately stopped, not by force or trickery, but by love. Lucretia found herself crying, and looked down to see Angus patting her hand gently. There were tears in his eyes too, but he bravely blinked them back, giving her a long searching look.

“I’ll help them do better, ma’am,” he said.

“I know you will, Angus.”

 

When Lucretia called Angus into her office after their return, Taako, Merle, and Magnus treated the boy with an absurd mix of affection and teasing. Taako swore he thought the boy had died on the Rockport Limited. Merle looked awkward and uncomfortable, like he didn’t know how to be around children. And then Magnus: Magnus immediately acted as if Angus were some sort of dog that the Bureau had adopted rather than an actual Seeker, brighter than most of her other Seekers if she had to be honest.

Not that she helped, really; she couldn’t stop herself from tousling the boy’s hair when he came in, making him blush with embarrassment. He really was too serious, not that she had any idea what that was like.

“I’m just a co-worker,” he said earnestly, his eyes pleading with these strange adults to take him seriously. And the boys had laughed, and he had frowned just a bit.

“I am a real Seeker, right?” he asked her, after they left.

“Of course, Angus. They’re like that with everybody, you know how it is.”

“Yes. I know. How can they be the only ones who can handle the relics, ma’am; it doesn’t seem  _ fair_. They just don’t take anything seriously!”

She chuckled.

“There’s more to life than taking it seriously,” she said.

He wrinkled up his little nose and fidgeted with the stone of far-speech hanging around his neck.

“But I still don’t  _ understand_. It doesn’t make any  _ sense_.”

That expression, the look of wanting everything to be fair and right: it’s a thing she’s seen on Magnus’ face how many times? A hundred? A thousand? A million? How many days are there in a hundred years? She didn’t take his hand or ruffle his hair; she looked him dead in the eye, because this little boy is an old soul, a kindred soul...and unfortunately, she had to lie through her teeth to him.

“We don’t know why Magnus and Merle and Taako have been able to resist the thrall. It’s just one of the mysteries of the grand relics. I’m just grateful we found them.”

That much at least is true.

 

Over the next few months, they fell into a sort of routine. After breakfast, Angus would come to her office, and together the two of them would look through reports from other Seekers. He always carried a little notebook and pencil, and he made notes about potential relic locations in his round tidy handwriting.

Then they usually ate lunch together, sometimes in the cafeteria, but often they would be so engrossed in conversation that they had both forgotten the time. The only way they remembered to take a break was the arrival of Davenport with a tray of sandwiches, the gnome clearing his throat and saying tentatively, “Davenport.”

Angus was always kind to the gnome, treating him gently, telling him thank you very sincerely, offering him one of the sandwiches every time. He called Davenport sir, the way he called everyone sir and ma’am.

“My grandpa taught me to be kind and respectful to everyone you meet,” he said once. “It’s just polite.” Then he paused, and that twinkling smile (neither hers, nor Magnus’, but a thing all his own) appeared. “Besides, criminals always trip up around polite little boys.”

She’d laughed at that.

“Liars, too.”

Well, that was a little close to the bone. She’d managed to simply raise an eyebrow and go back to her sandwich.

After lunchtime, she always sent him off to further his education. While there wasn’t exactly a school on the moon, there was plenty for Angus to learn.

Boyland, with his hundreds of kids, was delighted to take on Angus as a pupil for physical training. The librarians adored his presence as he set his own regime for reading: math, history, literature, and magic. Avi gave him lessons not just on the use of the glass spheres, but on their engineering and development. The boy soaked up everything.

He even spent time with the phlegmatic Johann in the voidfish’s chamber. He picked up a little music, learning scales on a small violin that Johann found somewhere, or possibly had sent up from the surface. Johann was close to very few people, but he seemed to enjoy the boy detective’s chatter and earnest interest in both music and the voidfish.

“Johann’s going to teach me one of his compositions and then we’re going to play it together for the voidfish,” Angus told her one day not long before Candlenights. “I sure do like that voidfish with all of its twinkling lights. Sometimes it waves its long tendrils at me, ma’am, and I feel like it’s really friendly there in its big old tank. I wish I knew more about it.”

She wished she could go watch him play violin for the voidfish. She could imagine Fischer reaching out its enormous tendrils, waving in delight at the boy’s duet with Johann. But the last time she went into the chamber, anytime other than when all the Bureau was gathered together, she was horrified at how it threw itself against the glass, the terrifying wailing noise that it made. It was dumb luck that no one else had been there.

“I’m sure the voidfish will enjoy your performance a great deal, Angus dear.”

 

Then Candlenights came, and at least the terror of Lucas’ lab nearly falling out of the sky overwhelmed the awful reception of Angus’ incredibly sincere gifts. Lucretia had to watch Angus’ panic after the stones of far-speech went dead because of one of Lucas’ damnable robots. But he stayed awake as long as he could to see Magnus and Merle and Taako and Carey come back.

“Couldn’t have done it without you, Dangus,” said Magnus. And the look of pride in the boy’s face was honestly more than Lucretia could bear. But there was too much to deal with then, and so Angus just slipped away back to sleep, while she grilled them about Lucas and Maureen.

There would be too much to deal with for a while, but she tried to at least keep him nearby. He stood with her at Boyland’s Rites of Remembrance, squinting thoughtfully at the glittering lights that followed feeding the memory of Boyland to the voidfish.

“Do you think it’ll hurt all of Boyland’s kids,” he asked, “to not have a dad?”

“The voidfish fills things in, sometimes,” she said. “People, they...their minds work around it to make the world make sense.”

“I bet they’ll be sad and not know why,” he said softly, almost too softly for her to hear.

 

Lucretia never asked him what he’d been told about his parents. But when Taako and Magnus took a kinder tone with the boy, she encouraged him to spend time with them. Taako doted on the boy, once he realized how much Angus admired his magical abilities, while Magnus brought Angus into fighting sessions that were probably far too dangerous for his age. 

If Lucretia had been paying attention, she might’ve told Magnus and the Regulators to ease up a little. But Angus got tough and fast under their tutelage, and when he turned up in her office with random scrapes and bruises, his explanations always sounded good.

And she was not paying nearly enough attention; every day that passed increased her anxiety, every day that the Hunger was growing closer was a day that she needed to be getting ready for her plan. 

She sent her reclaimers to Refuge, and they came back tired and sad and strange, Magnus especially, and then she prepared to send them to Wonderland. She spent more time alone, more time in her own head, and it was time that she didn’t spend with the boy. Her son. She got her son back, somehow by the strange threads of fate in this universe, and she ignored him because she was…. She was trying to save the world.

 

The whole time that Merle, Taako, and Magnus were in Wonderland, Angus sat in Lucretia’s office with the stone of far-speech. They didn’t talk at all, which in retrospect maybe should’ve seemed strange, because usually he talked so much and so freely. Instead, he read pretty much the whole Caleb Cleveland series while she pretended to be making notes, instead just doodling aimlessly in a journal.

The stone crackled to life for just a moment, and Angus frantically tried to call out to them.

“Sirs? Are you there?”

Then it went dead again, and then they both had to wait, overnight and into the next day. Magnus didn’t come back. She was so glad to see Merle and Taako, but Magnus was gone. They had the bell; Davenport had put the bell into the ball, but Magnus was gone. And with that feeling ringing in her head at the same time that she had to do this final part of her plan, trying to finish a decade’s work, she lost track of where Angus had gotten to.

He was with Taako and Merle, and gods: Barry, somehow Barry was always there, but Angus looked oddly calm while the other three were reeling from their inoculation. He watched her carefully, thoughtfully, while she told Taako and Merle enough to help them understand what they were feeling. He pushed up those glasses with that familiar little gesture, and nodded along with her explanation. And he was there to support Davenport, when the gnome staggered as he recovered his memories.

No one noticed him, not after Magnus threw open the door, the Hunger at his heels; no one except Lucretia heard Angus McDonald, the World’s Greatest Detective, whisper to himself: “Mom? Dad?”

**Author's Note:**

> Wooden Ducks Anonymous, thank you again for enabling this madness.


End file.
